Many smaller businesses have had an extremely tough 18 months, with revenues hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. Why should they be prioritising employees benefits now?
Looking after your staff is essential if you want to thrive as a business. Many SMEs may have been hit by the pandemic, but if they want to recover and continue to grow, employee benefits are an important part of attracting and keeping key staff.
In our recent Small Business Monitor it was notable that employers’ second biggest concern was the mental health and wellbeing of their staff (Covid-19 remained their biggest worry). Mental health was also the single biggest concern among employees, according to small business owners. Many mental health problems have worsened due to the pandemic, whether as a result of financial stress or isolation through more remote working practices. Having a wellbeing strategy and providing high-quality, practical employee benefits can help alleviate these concerns.
Where should SMEs start when it comes to implementing a wellbeing strategy?
A WorkLife we offer support and guidance for our SME clients to help them put in place a wellbeing framework. An effective wellbeing strategy should address the five key pillars of wellbeing: financial, mental, physical, social and environmental.
Our core offering addresses these various areas with the aim of helping employers support their employees in a number of ways.
We would recommend clients look to offer a number of core employee benefits to start with, but then review them on a regular basis, getting feedback from employees about what they value and what has been most used. There are always the options to add, upgrade or change the suite of benefits provided to ensure it is meeting employees’ needs.
Effective communications are also important, so employees know exactly what benefits are available, and how they can help them. This can drive up engagement delivering benefits for the employee and employer.
How do you expect the benefits and wellbeing market to evolve over the next
five years?
Rather than be a ‘nice-to-have’ we think a well-thought out employee benefits strategy will be a must-have for business of all sizes. Employee wellbeing becomes ever more important when people are increasingly working from home, or are in hybrid working arrangements, with blurred lines between their home and work life.
There is likely to be an increased focus on financial wellbeing as one of the central pillars of employee benefits. To date, many employers have perhaps focused less on this, with more of an emphasis on the physical and mental health of staff. Financial wellbeing though is critical and concerns about debt or other money worries can create and feed into other mental health problems.
Within our core offering we provide the OpenMoney app, which offers access to free financial advice. This is individual advice, based on an employee’s own circumstances, whether it is helping them decide which debts to pay off first, or whether they should start saving or investing.
Many employee benefits packages offer help with financial education but this is often just a short course, or general information on how to manage money better. We think there will increasingly be demand from employees for better financial advice solutions.
The range of benefits available is likely to expand too. For example we will be offering a private healthcare cash plan, health screening and options to buy electric vehicles through salary sacrifice via our platform shortly.
How cost effective are these employee benefit options for SMEs?
Technology is helping to reduce costs and ensure that businesses of all sizes, including SMEs can offer key benefits to their employees. Our platform offers five core employee benefits, for a cost of £5 per employee per month. Core benefits include access to free financial advice, a will writing service, free advice for people buying their first home, discounted insurance, shopping and gym discounts and access to Thrive, the NHS-approved app which offers a range of practical steps to help people take control of their mental health.